


Hush

by shauds



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, The lazarus pit is a great plot device
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-05 21:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shauds/pseuds/shauds
Summary: The pit reverses more than just the damage done to Jason's mind, now instead of helping a skilled, physically able teenager get away from Ras' compound, Talia has to escape with a small child.





	1. Chapter 1

Talia's plans, with the little time she'd had to arrange them, had accounted for only so much. She'd counted on the shock from both her father and his guards to allow her the time she needed to get the boy into and out of the pit. She'd mentally mapped out a path through the compound with the lowest possible chance of interference from both simple staff and higher trained agents. She'd gotten a single man to wait at the foot of the cliff, the small blindspot the only route that offered even the chance at escape. She hoped as much as she dared, that the pit would sharpen the skills months of inactivity had dulled when she threw the boy over the edge.

As plans went it was laughable, had one of her people suggested something so sudden and hinging so on something so intangible as hope when the outcome was so dire, she would have dismissed them out of hand. There is so much that hasn't been accounted for, so many points where it could turn to disaster and Talia has to fight against agonizing over them even as she leads Jason to the pit.

Later, she'll realize that even if she'd has the foresight to plan something of this sort months ago, though, that even had she been granted months in which to plan, there was likely not the smallest of chances she'd have foreseen this.

Out of the pit does not come a boy, almost a man, trained and nurtured by one of the greatest individuals on the planet. The screams that knock off the green tinged walls are too shrill, too panicked, too little of the rage and the madness she'd prepared herself for. 

Jason doesn't pull himself out of the pit as instinct should have driven him to, by the uncoordinated way the thrashes in the waters, it's unlikely a lack of instinct is the problem.

It's that he's small, too small, smaller even than he'd been going in. It's not impossible, as much as she's seen in her lifetime, Talia knows there is nothing impossible in this world. This isn't the time for thinking, for altering her plans, or even wondering if there is any amount of altering that could fix this; her father has already noticed he's not alone in the pit. Talia grabs the hand that thrust out of the water, she ignores the screams, what he's screaming, and how easy it is to haul him up out of the waters and into her arms.

She runs. She makes better time this way than if she'd been dragging him through the compound as she'd thought, but the screaming draws too much unwanted attention. She makes it outside with her pursuers not a minute behind, she makes it to the cliff, looks to where the boat will be waiting. She can't see it, but she trusts it will be there the within seconds of something hitting the water.

Ras al Ghul appears at the doorway, he marches at her, fury plain on his face as the terror she knows she'll find on Jason's if she dares to look. 

The child's shrill screaming has died down into whispered pleas, no less frantic for how quiet they are. There's no point in asking if he can swim, it doesn't matter. In this state there's no way he'll survive the fall. If Talia's father sees what the pit has done, he won't merely send the boy away, he'll want to learn how. Even using the same methods he has previously… in such a case, sending Jason to see the mother he's so fervently begging for would be kinder.

"Hush now." Talia tells him, she wraps her arms tighter about his shivering form and for whatever reason it calms him. She holds him close giving him as much warmth as she can despite the knowledge that in seconds it will prove pointless.

But Talia's not thinking now, there'll be time for thinking later. Now, all Talia can to is clutch the child tightly to keep the current from ripping him away. She sucks in as much air as her lungs will hold, then she jumps.


	2. Chapter 2

Jason does survive the fall. Talia isn't surprised by it, she doesn't know why she feels the clenching in her chest that she does when he coughs up the water she couldn't get his head above water fast enough to keep him from swallowing and he finally starts his ragged breathing. She doesn't expect his the rise and fall of his small chest to give out at any moment. The very idea that something so simple could kill someone who's survived so much is absurd.

She holds him tightly to her, wrapped in the blanket she'd pulled from the supply bag she's been intending on sending him off too. It's to keep him from hypothermia, his small body can't hold warmth as it could have otherwise. With the amount of water he'd spit up and the shivering she can feel through the blanket, it's likely he'll take ill before they reach the shore.

He's so small.

Talia thinks of the last time she'd held a child this small so closely and hastily pushes those thoughts aside before they can take root even as she pushes aside the soaked curls from his furrowed brow. 

She can't place a physical age on him. Smaller by far than he'd been as the partner to batman. Small enough that his weight is no burden to hold, that he might fall over the side of the rocking little boat if she doesn't hold onto him tightly enough.

That the change goes deeper than just his size would be easy to believe just looking at him, but she knows how unlikely that is.

From what she's heard of the events leading to the boy's death, he might have taken his last breath calling out for his mother. It only makes sense that his first act after gaining some semblance of lucidity would be to do the same. At the time, it might have thrown her off, but regardless of the startling physical change, she cannot allow herself to believe there will be any more change that what she had expected when he wakes.

She should be thinking about how she will explain the situation to him when he finds himself half the size he was the last time he'd had the chance to notice. For some reason what she thinks instead was that if she were going to cross her father as she has, taken these risks, she might have done so without the use of the pits.

It doesn't take long for he to shut down that string of thought either. For some purpose, fate had commanded him back to the world and it was no right of Talia's to hinder it. When her man asks for instructions she tells him only to proceed as planned, nothing much has changed.

There's no moon or stars to light the ocean, nothing to give away how she holds onto the child, and for only a little while, dares allow herself to grieve the one she'd given to the pit.

****

*******

Jason thinks he's sick.

It feels like he's sick. Everything's too hot but he's cold, his chest hurts and his throat is all scratchy. He just knows that if he tries to say anything it's going to hurt too.

He does **feel** sick, but he also feels like something else that's like the opposite of being sick. Or maybe like he was sick, but isn't anymore. It's confusing and when he tries to make sense of it, it just makes his head hurt even more.

If he was sick before, he doesn't remember, thinking back, the last thing he remembers is...

Burning. The whole world moving around him, people shouting in words he didn't understand how he could understand. Then falling and cold, water that hurt too much when he hit it that tasted like too much salt going down his throat and stinging at his eyes and he couldn't breath.

Jason can't breath now, he sits up in a bed that's not his bed or Mom's bed, it's too big and too soft and the room is even more of being too big. Too dark and he's all alone.

Somehow he knows, again without knowing why, that calling for Mom won't help, but he tries anyway. His voice catches on his rough, scratchy throat, so soft even he can barely hear it, so he tries again. 

"Mom!" He **just** croaks the word out and breaks into a fit of coughing that sets him on fire and makes him think of water burning him up. "Mom!." He calls again, loud enough this time that someone must have heard it.

The bed is big enough that when he tries to climb down from it with the blankets all wrapped around his feet, he falls down and knocks something over that makes a loud noise when it hits the ground. Jason doesn't try and see when it was. As soon as his legs are untangles he makes for the outline of the door he can just make out past blurry eyes and the darkness of the room.

The doorknob is high up enough that Jason has to stand on his tiptoes if he wants to reach it, but he's coughing again before he can try and it hurts again so it's hard to even make his arms each up for it.

Turns out he doesn't have to.

The door opens on it's own. Or well, a lady on the other side opens it up. Jason falls over when she appears so suddenly in front of him. There's a click and once the lights are on she looks real quickly around the room before she even turns to him.

"Jason." She sounds relieved when she steps over to him and bends down near him. When she pulls him to his feet and he doesn't stay that way, she picks him up and carries him back to the bed, stepping around the sparkly broken pieces of the lamp on the floor. She hums softly when she sets him down on it and turns him over on his side.

Slowly, breathing gets a little easier and the coughing calms down enough that it doesn't hurt so much anymore. Jason's tired, he's so tired now. The maybe not sick feeling is gone and now he just feels bad and wrong.

"Hush now." She says and presses her hand against his cheek, then she makes a clicking sound and says something about infection, but with words Jason's not supposed to understand. "Do you understand what's happening?"

Jason shakes his head, too busy sucking in air as best he can to say anything right away.

"Mom." He gets the word out right after he takes in a breath that's too big and makes him cough again and makes it **hurt** again. "Where's Mom?" He has to ask anyway and the sob that comes with it hurts almost as much as the coughing.

The lady looks very sad when she looks down at him, she sighs and then her lips press together tightly before she speaks. "I'm sorry." She pulls over another blanket from the bottom of the bed to cover him with. "Your mother hasn't returned as you have."

Jason pushes the blanket off of him so he can get himself up. "Where'd she go?" He sucks in another breath. "Can't I go back?"

"Oh, Jason, no." She shakes her head, and she looks so, so sad.

"Then I'll wait at home." Jason tries and tries to get up again. He wishes he could be more surprised when she shakes her head again. He already knew he couldn't wait at home, knew Mom wasn't at home, but that's not something he can know. "I gotta go home." Because Mom has to be at home, she wouldn't leave him here all by himself.

"I'm sorry." The lady says again, she lets Jason curl over and press his face into her shoulder.

Something in his chest is hurting even more than it did before and where before it was hard to breath, now he doesn't think he can at all. "But she was just there." He remembers she was there before the burning in the water, he knows he does. He thinks he does. He remembers there was **someone** there, and it had to be… _Hush, Jason._

It takes Jason a while to notice he's been crying, holding onto two handfuls of the lady's sweater because there's nothing else to hold onto and if he doesn't something bad's going to happen. Something bad's already happened to Mom and he doesn't want it to get him too, but he should because he's supposed to stay where she can see him and he can't see her so how's she supposed to see him? Breathing was hard before, now it feels like Jason can't do it at all, he can't scream and he can't call out or know she's going to come get him. Something in him hurts so much more than he did before that he doesn't even remember why he thought it even did hurt then.

For a while, the lady doesn't say anything. She lets him hold her and her hand stays pressed against his back, holding him steady until eventually, when Jason can't cry anymore, when all he hiccup and his breathing sounds like a squeaky tap, he feels himself being moved back to the pillows and a blanket is pulled up over him again.

The lady brushes her hand against his cheek again, smearing the trials of wet on them, she shakes her head. "If there were a way to bring her back to you." She moves the hand up to his hair. "She wouldn't want you to be ill, would you be able to drink some medicine?"

Jason doesn't know if he can, but he nods anyway and gathers some of the blanket in his hands for something to hold onto when she gets up to leave. 

At the door, she pauses to look back at him. "When you're feeling better you can decide whether you will be contacting Bruce or not."

There've already been too many new things, Jason doesn't want to deal with another one. This one seems important though, so before his eyes slide closed, he asks. "Who's Bruce?"

She doesn't answer right away, and if she does at all, he's sleeping before he hears it.

****

*******

That is might be shock is something she considers, to her knowledge, the pit has never removed so large a part of one's memories. Then, it has never turned back time in this way either. Or perhaps it has, the only way for her to know is to contact her father again, and she would rather deal with this unknown that what she remains certain will await if they're found.

Talia has to help him hold up the bowl of lukewarm soup she brings him when he's well enough to sit. Not because he's too weak from the illness to lift it, but because the bowl is too big for him to balance it in his small hands without sloshing the liquid over the rim. Because he's too small, and too young to do it himself.

It's hours before she can can get any answers from the boy, before she can get him focused enough on his surroundings that he can engage in any sort of conversation, and even then he does little but confirm what she already knows, what she'd convinced herself she'd been imagining after the pit.

No line of questioning seems to spark any recollection of Bruce, switching over to Batman and Robin only gets her a story about a tattoo his father had bragged about. Of Gotham City, he has no more than a small child's limited understanding, he knows he lives there, but can't name many landmarks and even those are all inside Park Row.

He **is** a child - six years old as h'e'd proclaimed with the requisite amount of fingers raised for her inspection - , and whatever may be left of the young man who was once Robin has been buried down too deeply for her to find it. In his place is an ill, confused child who's just woken to find both parents dead and himself in a place so far from his home that he can scarcely comprehend it with only a complete stranger for company. He's more the child she'd been caring for before the pit than he is the one he was earlier still.

The fever breaks not a day later and Talia is far more relieved than she's thought she'd be. While, he would never have remained ill long, not so soon after his immersion in the pit, but it still strikes her as cruel that it's another layer of misery added onto what he's already experienced in what to him is so short a period of time. 

Jason's reaction when she shows him the thermometer and explains what it means doesn't quite match up with Talia's.

"M'I goin' to the orphandage now?" He asks her with so serious and resigned frown that she might not have noticed his mispronunciation of the word. 

Talia's so caught by his expression that it takes her a moment to give his question an answer. "No." She says simply and sets down the thermometer on the table that has once held a bedside lamp. "You would never end up in an **orphanage** of all places."

"But, my mom and dad are…" He cuts himself off abruptly and pulls the bedcovers over his head, his shape under them curling into a ball, she has to hold her head closer to hear his next, wobbly words. "That's what happened to Oliver Twist."

"You are not Oliver Twist." She carefully pries the covers from his fists to reveal his flushed, already tear lined face. Reminding him of the little she'd already told him about Bruce is something she considers only for a moment. While Bruce might not have seen fit to avenge the boy, there is no question that Jason had been loved in the care of her beloved. Still, Talia's learned that when it comes to the child Jason is now, making assumptions and letting him believe those could do more harm than anything. "I would never allow such a thing."

"Okay." He doesn't asks her to prove or affirm her answer in any way. It's a sort of trust one can get only from a child, and at that a child who's never learned to doubt such things. It's doubtful that even her own child would be this trusting with her, and with a stranger, never. It's almost frightening, to even think what might become of Damian were he this innocent in the world they inhabit. Then she remembers what had become of **this** child she feels very much like she's just swallowed a pile of rocks.

Talia doesn't let it show on her face, she offers Jason a smile and tucks the covers under his chin. He's not completely healthy yet and there's no sense in risking it. "Rest for now, I'll wake you when dinner arrives."

This time there's no verbal response, he just nods once and burrows down into the blankets as if he's an animal preparing for hibernation. 

He is, by far, too trusting, but Talia finds that even more than fear, she can't help but be grateful that such trust falls on her.

She's just sent for food and settled down to catch up on the few reports she'd missed in the time she'd been tending to Jason when the telephone rings. Extreme measures had been taken to be sure that phone could only be used by the few followers she'd picked herself before and immediately after her unplanned flight from the compound, and they had been given orders to use it only the in the most extreme of circumstances. There is nothing in the reports to hint such circumstances may have arisen.

She lifts the receiver from it's cradle gently, as though that would make any difference to what she'll hear on the other end.

'_Mother_?'

Damian.

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Anonymous on tumblr.


End file.
